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Tenet: Sovereign Death Metal, Thrash Century Media Records July 20th, 2009
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Review
Sovereign is the debut album from metal supergroup Tenet, which features (from their most well known bands) Steve "Zetro" Souza from Exodus, Jed Simon and Byron Stroud from Strapping Young Lad, Glen Alvelais from Testament, and Gene Hogan a wide array of bands but mostly notedly from Death. Given this very impressive line-up, it's almost a sure bet that Tenet is going to be one hell of a metal romp no matter what, right? Well, don't get your hopes up too high, because it's hard to believe that this effort actually came from such a group of individuals like this. While it has some great moments, it also has moments that don't bring anything that new to the table. Vocally, Sovereign could have benefitted from a different type of vocalist, as the higher raspy vocals work for some of the songs, like the Thrash heavy "Unnameable" and "Take A Long Line", but some of the tracks on here sound like they'd be better off with a much lower pitched vocalist. The album kicks off with "Being And Nothingness" which is impressive as far as the music goes, but unfortunately is just heavy without any real bite to it. Same thing happens with "Indulge Me", another tight and heavy song, but there's no real bite to it that will make it stick. "Crown Of Thorns" is about the time the album kicks off with some heavy music that has that edge to it that you would expect from these guys, and everything just starts to click. There are some impressive songs on here once the album starts rolling. "Take A Long Line" is the most infectious track on here with it's group chants, heavy Thrash influence and catchy chorus. "Hail! Hail!" is a remarkable track as well with an absolutely intense guitar solo that makes you wish the entire track had the sane intensity that it ends on. But, there's some oddities on here as well, like "Watching You Burn" which is a rather simple song with some Melodic Death in the riffs, as well as some moments that obviously seeped through from Gene's time working on the Dethklok project, even though it shows up in the guitars. The other odd track on here would be "Going Down", the longest one, which just is not a good track at all. The lyrics state exactly how the song feels to the listener, like it started off as one thing but then become a very slow paced filler track that is just too drawn out and repetative. Tenet has the possibility of being a very explosive band, but Sovereign just doesn't really meet the expectation. Sure the music on here is heavy as hell with some insane guitar riffs, but only about half of the album is anything really worth going nuts over. It's clear the band has brought in a lot of their previous work with them, which is the problem with groups like this. A number of the tracks on here will come across as either unoriginal, as if you heard them already, like the band couldn't merge the Death and Thrash well and decided to just go as fast as possible, or both. Hopefully the band will continue, as there is a lot of promise, but they really need to fixate on one specific sound they want to have and quit running all over the board with it.
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